SOFIA CRESPO (B. 1991) AND ANNA RIDLER (B. 1985)
Long Short Term Memories (sketches from a garden in Argentina)
(i)
unique polaroid prints
3 1/2 x 4 1/5 in. (8.8 x 10.7cm), each (24)
Executed in 2025

(ii)
smart contract: 0x88c010ac338b58A542C8Fb720A092BdA3775494F
token ID: 1
wallet: 0xf705CdC5ad3869BAD087620c1b52Eb2E55019692
single-channel video
00:00:16 seconds (2,160 x 3,840 pixels)
Executed in 2025 and minted on 13 February 2025. This work is unique and accompanied by a non-fungible token.

The artists

Sofia Crespo and Anna Ridler, both listed by Artnet as “pioneering artists” exploring AI’s creative potential, frequently collaborate to draw together their combined interests in nature and the history of photography. The piece, created using a dataset of only photographs both artists took on various trips to Argentina, is translated and retranslated using a variety of different AI models, from the analogue to the digital and back again. Presented here is some of this process - a number of polaroids of already synthetic images that were used for training and the resulting digital images. The artists believe that this iterative method, driven by AI, brings them close to the process described in Borges’ short story Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius where copies over time and cycles contain “a purity of line not found in the original”. It also draws parallels with the way that neuroscientists have discovered that the process of recalling a memory activates the same processes as the act of creating a memory - every time something is remembered it is also actively recreated. The duality of memory is combined in this work in the hazy blurry nature of polaroids and the crisp sharp detail of the digital.